Doomsday: The Macross Saga

by Jack McKinney

  “I know what you mean,” Claudia said at the door to her quarters. “It can be rough sometimes—when you find you’re in love.”

  Lisa still grew a little wide-eyed at hearing it stated so matter-of-factly. She blinked and swallowed hard, ready to defend herself, but Claudia cut her off.

  “Go get him, okay?” A wink for Lisa also, and she was through the door.

  Inside, she dropped herself on the bed and kicked off her heels, sighing: I hope those two get it together soon. Lisa had a habit of pushing “understanding” to the limit. And Hunter … Hunter was starting to remind her of Roy in his early days. And that wasn’t necessarily a good sign.

  Alone in Lisa’s quarters Rick felt nervous and trapped. His superior, huh? Just how long was he going to have to put up with that remark? Almost three years ago—on this very ship!—Lisa had used that remark, and he had held it against her ever since.

  Lisa had unpacked some of her things, and Rick was wandering around inspecting this and that when he saw a framed photograph on the room’s desk. He picked it up and regarded it. By the look of it, it had to have been taken ten years ago. But here was Lisa looking cute in short hair and chubby face, standing alongside an older guy, taller than she was by a foot and wearing what looked to be an Afghani woven cap. Nice-looking couple, he decided. But there was something familiar about him … something that reminded him of … Kyle! Then this had to be Riber, Rick realized. Karl Riber, Lisa’s onetime true love, who had bought it along with Mars Sara Base years ago.

  His attention was so fixed on the photo that he didn’t hear Lisa enter the room. She realized this and stood in the doorway a moment, not wanting to startle him or make him uncomfortable. Finally she called his name softly, and he reacted like a sneakthief caught in the act, dropping the photo sideways to the desk and apologizing.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Lisa. I didn’t mean to snoop.”

  This angered her: after all they had been through together, after all the time they had spent together, sharing secret thoughts and feelings, after all the time she had spent at his place in New Macross familiarizing herself with his things …

  “What do you mean “snoop”? I have nothing to hide from you, Rick. Be my guest, look around—not that there’s much here …”

  “Uh, sure,” he said, at a loss. “So, uh, what did you and Claudia have to say?”

  Lisa dismissed her conversation with Claudia as nothing special and asked him if he wanted some tea. “You know, just a little chat,” she told him from the kitchenette.

  Rick righted the photo when she left the room. He joined Lisa on the couch afterward.

  “Didn’t sound like just a little chat to me,” he braved to say, tea cup in hand.

  “Well, as a matter of fact, we were talking about you.”

  Rick squirmed in his seat. “If it concerns me and Minmei, I don’t want to hear about it!”

  “It wasn’t at all about Minmei,” she said cheerfully. “What would I possibly want to talk about her for?”

  Unpracticed at this sort of thing, Lisa wished for a second that Claudia could stand over her shoulder during moments like these, feeding her the right lines or something. But oddly enough, Rick was apologizing for his tone.

  “Minmei and I haven’t seen much of each other in several months, and …”

  “Oh, Rick,” she said, perhaps too tenderly. “I know how you feel about her, so … well, there’s nothing more to say about it.”

  Acceptance was the one tack she hadn’t tried yet.

  Rick breathed a sigh and was puzzling over how he could just politely excuse himself, when Lisa added:

  “I don’t know why, but I get the feeling sometimes that you … well, that’s there’s something you want …”

  Who doesn’t? Rick asked himself, wondering just what she was getting at now.

  “What are you talking about?”

  She made an exasperated sound. “Rick, you know what I—”

  The PA chose just that moment to intervene: A female voice was calling Lisa to the bridge.

  Frustrated, Lisa said, “The usual perfect timing,” then laughed. “You’ve managed to escape unscathed once again.” She stood up and bade him a resigned good-bye. “We’ll try this again some other time.”

  Rick reacted as if a dentist had just told him to make another appointment.

  Claudia had also been summoned to the bridge. She stood stiffly with Lisa now on the automated walkway that was actually the curved top rail of the observation bubble, her back to the astrogation hold. The ship had unexpectedly defolded from hyperspace, and they were once again feeling a bit shaky.

  Exedore was manning one of the human-size duty stations. Breetai was seated in his command chair, a grim look on his face. When Lisa said, “Reporting as ordered,” he uttered a throaty growl and inclined his head a fraction to the left, as if to indicate the object of his attention.

  Claudia and Lisa about-faced and eyed an image now filling the rectangular field of the projecbeam. It was like nothing either of them had ever seen—a twisted convoluted dark mass of armor, tentacles, reflex thruster ports, and sensor devices, smoothed and eroded-looking along its dorsal side, like a monstrous hunk of extraterrestrial driftwood.

  “What in space is that?” Claudia asked.

  “That, my dear Commander Grant, is a ship from our reconnaissance force—a fairly late model if I’m not mistaken.”

  “B-But I’ve never seen anything like it!” Lisa exclaimed.

  “That is not unlikely,” Breetai told her.

  Lisa turned to Exedore and ordered a status report.

  “I have made a positive identification, and it is in fact a late-model reconnaissance vessel. It has been somewhat modified for hyperspace travel. Moreover, our scanners indicate no biological activity whatsoever.”

  Lisa noticed the concerned look on his face as he studied the image and attendant glyphic readouts. Sectional views and close-ups of salient features of the thing flashed across his monitor screen to illustrate his report.

  Lisa sucked in her breath and turned to Breetai once more.

  “Commander, we have to investigate!”

  “That is completely out of the question,” he snapped.

  “Sir,” she tried, “isn’t it possible your scanning systems may have missed something? Perhaps there are Zentraedi aboard? Isn’t there any margin for error?”

  She didn’t believe a word of it, and judging from the look on Exedore’s face, neither did he. But it was possible there were weapons aboard—pods, tri-thrusters, something the Earth forces could use to beef up their arsenal.

  “The information assimilated is in accordance with the galactic code,” Exedore told her sternly. “‘Errors’ are not possible.”

  “We can’t waste an opportunity like this—we must investigate!” she answered him, filing away “galactic code” for some future discussion. “The possibility of Zentraedi—”

  “Your compassion is commendable,” Exedore interrupted, still unconvinced. “However, it looks to me as though the vessel could be a trap.”

  “A trap?!”

  “Yes,” he continued. “We Zentraedi are known for such ‘Trojan horses,’ as you call them. It is not wise to take such a risk.”

  Claudia decided to step in. “He’s right—we can’t jeopardize the mission, Lisa.”

  “I suppose …” she said uncertainly.

  “It is worse than you realize,” Breetai intoned behind her. “This vessel belongs to the Robotech Masters. It is one of many which act as their eyes and ears.”

  The Robotech Masters, Lisa exclaimed to herself.

  “You’re saying that they could monitor our presence.”

  Breetai grunted. “I fear they already have.”

  CHAPTER

  SEVEN

  Your Earth scientists are a fanciful lot: all this talk about time travel, relativity, looking through a telescope and being able to see the back of your own head … I suppose it all looked g
ood on paper.

  Exedore, as quoted in Lapstein’s Interviews

  Defolding from hyperspace once again, Breetai’s flagship materialized in real time hundreds of parsecs from Earth.

  If the image of the Robotech surveillance vessel had awed Lisa, the form and appearance of the automated factory satellite positively stunned her. It had the same vegetal look as the smaller vessel, the same external convolutions, cellular armor, and incomprehensible aspect, but all similarities ended there. The satellite was enormous, almost organically rose-colored in starlight, shaped in some ways like a primate brain, with at least half a dozen replicas of itself attached to the factory’s median section by rigid stalklike transport tubes. In orbit around it were hundreds of Zentraedi craft: dreadnoughts, battle mecha, and Cyclops recons.

  “My dear colleagues,” Breetai announced as a close-up of the factory appeared in the projecbeam field, “we have arrived.”

  Lisa, Claudia, and Exedore looked up from their duty stations.

  “It’s incredible!” Claudia exclaimed breathlessly.

  Lisa made a sound of amazement. “Whatever powers created that must be light-years beyond us,” she said softly, recalling her first glimpse of Dolza’s command center and the surveillance vessel they had left behind only hours ago. “It’s still hard to believe that such things exist in our universe.”

  “Well, all I can say is you better believe it, Commander,” Max Sterling chimed in from Lisa’s monitor, his helmeted image filling the screen. Max and Miriya’s Veritechs were in position on the docking bay elevator, preparing for launch.

  Lisa went on the com net. “Max, remember: You must convince Reno that we possess the Protoculture.”

  “Right, Captain.” He saluted and signed off.

  “Exedore,” Breetai said from behind Lisa. “Summon Commander Hunter to the bridge immediately.”

  Lisa swiveled in her seat to face the commander while Exedore carried out the order.

  “What do you have in mind, Commander?” she asked him.

  Breetai showed a roguish smile. “I must apologize for not having informed you sooner, but you are of course aware that diversionary tactics will be necessary if our plan is to be successful.”

  “I support the tactic,” she said warily. “But I thought we had agreed to broadcast Minmei’s voice.”

  “Correct,” he responded, suddenly turning to Exedore. “However, we have devised a small modification.”

  Lisa didn’t like the sound of it, especially when she saw Exedore return the commander’s grin and add, “Your Lordship, that was your plan from the beginning, was it not?”

  Breetai issued a short laugh. He was pleased to see that his adviser had not been completely changed by the Micronian ways; Exedore still refused to take credit for a plan, even when his inspirations had guided it.

  “Your modesty equals your intelligence,” Breetai told him. Then, turning again to Lisa: “Captain, we have decided that the kiss would be a more effective counterattack. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Lisa’s eyes went wide and unfocused; she began to slump down in her chair, her stomach in knots. “Umm … I suppose …” she managed.

  “I’m sure you recall the extraordinary effect produced when you and Commander Hunter touched lips,” Breetai was saying.

  Claudia meanwhile had left her station and was coming Lisa’s way, a sly smile already in place. “Liisaaa …” she said playfully, putting her hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Come on, Captain, can’t you see it’s a brilliant plan! Nothing to get upset about.”

  Lisa was staring blankly at the monitor. Plan? she asked herself. Yeah, but what plan were they all talking about: the one to fool the Zentraedi Reno, or were these galactic events suddenly taking second place to a universal conspiracy meant to bring her and Rick together?

  “Lord Breetai,” a Zentraedi voice announced. “A transmission from Commander Reno. Shall I put it through, sir?”

  Breetai raised himself out of the command chair.

  “Yes. And use the translator so that our friends can understand him.”

  Reno’s face and shoulders took shape in the projecbeam field. A swarthy male with large eyes, dark busy brows, and a square jaw, Reno wore a blue uniform with red piping and a green command tunic. He opened with formalities, although wariness was suggested by both his voice and his stance.

  “Welcome,” he told Breetai, the English translation out of synch with the movements of his full lips. “It has been a long time, Commander.”

  “Indeed,” said Breetai flatly. They hadn’t seen each other since that fateful day long ago when Zor had been killed; when Dolza had ordered Reno to return the scientist’s body to the Masters; when Zentraedi and Invid had fought to the death … Breetai unconsciously stroked the faceplate that concealed scars from those less confused times …

  “Do you come as friend or foe?”

  “We have retrieved the Protoculture matrix from Zor’s dimensional fortress, Reno. Our powers are limitless. I have come to demand that you surrender the satellite to me. Join me and my friendship is yours. Oppose me and perish.”

  Reno snorted. “So you’ve stolen Zor’s science, have you?… And of course you and your new Micronian playmates plan to keep it from the Masters … Any other amusing anecdotes you wish to relate, Breetai?”

  The commander smiled knowingly. “Actually, I do have something else you might enjoy—it should be arriving at any minute.”

  “I’ll attempt to contain my boundless excitement,” Reno responded sarcastically.

  Rick was at just that moment arriving on the bridge. He saluted Breetai from the curved walkway.

  “Right on time,” said the pleased commander. He turned to Reno and issued his ultimatum: “This is your last opportunity to comply.”

  “Ridiculous!” Reno started to say. “The very fact that you have rejected the ways of the Robotech Masters indicates—” But his own projecbeam now closed on Lisa and Rick standing together on the walkway. Reno’s bushy brows went up. “What?! A female talking to a male?!”

  Breetai’s one eye sparkled. “Yes, that’s right, Commander. And now …”—like a master of ceremonies—“if you watch closely, you will witness the strange and glorious freedom that comes from Protoculture.”

  Rick meanwhile was baffled, casting confused looks to Breetai and the projecbeam image of Reno. He turned hopelessly to Lisa and whispered, “What the heck is going on?”

  “It’s all right,” Lisa said soothingly.

  Rick stiffened. If Lisa was telling him it was all right, he was really worried!

  “Max,” Miriya said over the tac net after hearing him laugh, “is there any chance Rick won’t go along with the change in the diversionary tactics?”

  Their Veritechs were wing to wing in deep space, closing fast on Reno’s command ship, thrusters blue in the eternal night. The drama on the bridge was being carried over the com net.

  “I don’t think I’m going to like this one little bit,” Rick was grumbling.

  Max grinned. “Don’t worry about him, Miriya. Remember: Rick Hunter is a professional.” The humor was of course lost on her.

  Miriya recognized Lisa’s voice now: “Yes, mister, I’m making it an order!”

  “It’s his job to take orders,” she heard Max comment. He’s so serious, she thought. Perhaps there was another side to kissing that she wasn’t aware of—some strategic method Max had yet to teach her. As a mother she was somewhat alarmed; but the warrior and fighter ace was downright angered. This was, after all, a dangerous mission they were flying. There might not be another opportunity …

  “Do you think we’ll ever have a chance to touch lips again, Max?”

  Max regarded her red-suited image on his commo screen and smiled. “I promise we will,” he assured her.

  “The Veritechs are within range of the tracking systems now,” Claudia reported from her duty station.

  “Commence broadcast,” Breetai told Exedore, ignoring for a
moment the minor battle that was in progress on the walkway below him.

  “No, Lisa!” Rick was shouting. “I’m not going to consent to the kiss, orders or no orders! I’m sorry, but my mind is made up!”

  Diversionary tactic, Rick said to himself with distaste. Of all the cheap shots Lisa could have taken! Just something to divert him from thinking about—

  Minmei?!

  Rick blinked; Minmei’s “Stagefright” was booming over the bridge PA system, and he seemed to be the only one surprised by it.

  Although that wasn’t quite true: Reno’s crew wasn’t prepared for this, either. Nor had they the chance to become gradually accustomed to singing, as Breetai’s crew had. Consequently, they reacted as though a combination of nerve gas, high-frequency sound, and unbridled electricity had suddenly been leveled against the ship.

  “Aaarh! Blast it!” screamed Reno, throwing his hands up to his ears.

  “Can’t stand it!” yelled his crew members, who were dropping like flies at their duty stations.

  “No more!” Reno pleaded. “Please turn it off!”

  It never failed to amaze Rick that Minmei’s voice could elicit such contrary responses from beings who supposedly had common ancestors; but he had scarcely a moment to dwell on it. Lisa had grabbed him by the shoulders and was now putting all she had into offensive osculation. And whew!—this was a different Lisa from the one who’d kissed him closed-mouthed in front of Breetai three years ago!

  “Well, Reno,” Breetai was saying at the same time, a self-satisfied smile on his face, “perhaps this will please you.”

  Reno, who had averted his gaze from the projecbeam, turned back to it now that Breetai had lowered that “sound weapon.” But the image that greeted his eyes was even more debilitating: Here were two Micronians …

  “—touching lips??!!” Reno wailed. He stared at the field, nauseated by confusion and some feeling even more alien to his system. From the ship’s astrogation hold came shrills of protest, pain, and caterwauling. Reno covered his eyes with his hand: He had barely enough strength to deactivate the projecbeam and felt close to fainting when he managed to do so. Below him, several of his troops had collapsed. But he would never admit to defeat.